چکیده انگلیسی

This paper discusses the conceptual design of a Global Decision Support System for a manufacturing Small or Medium Enterprise (SM/E), which actively participates in Collaborative Manufacturing. In order to implement the proposed concept, a Web Services based system architecture is proposed to offer maximum interoperability between all the distributed participants of a Collaborative Manufacturing Network (CMN) and their management information systems. Furthermore, this conceptual design utilises a Collaborative decision-support model that effectively interacts with the decision-makers and the management information systems/tools exist in the network, and provides appropriate support to all necessary decision-making steps towards the attainment of the network's strategic goals, while making full benefits of the network resources.

مقدمه انگلیسی

In recent years, many manufacturing enterprises that are operating worldwide show an interest for Collaborative Manufacturing (CM). This new business strategy offers manufacturers the critically needed competitive advantages (Camarinha-Matos and Macedo, 2010, Chung et al., 2004 and Johansen et al., 2005). CM is a concept that involves the establishment of Collaborative Manufacturing Networks (CMNs) in order to fully exploit the core competencies of every manufacturer within a network. The strategy is aiming to achieve best possible fulfilment of customer demands and improvement of their overall net profit, agility, and competitiveness towards the global market (Danilovic and Winroth, 2005 and Kuik et al., 2010). However, CM heavily relies on improved data, information, and knowledge transparency typically a commonly recognised decision-making approach to achieve balanced profits, costs, and risks among the participants (D'Amours et al., 1999, Lagerstrom and Andersson, 2003, Li and Lai, 2005 and Zhang et al., 2004). This reliance suggests that an integrated manufacturing decision-support infrastructure is essential for a CMN to successfully deliver the positive outcomes. Enhancing the existing capabilities on supporting the management and production activities are traditionally restricted to in-house operations and department-oriented operations. Advancing to the CM era, a corresponding new generation of manufacturing systems must also expand their features to administrate collaborative activities between the local enterprise and its business partners within the CMN (Chiu and Lin, 2004, Cil et al., 2005 and Perrin et al., 2003).
Since, collaborative activities are highly complex and dynamic (Cil et al., 2005, Perrin et al., 2003 and Xu et al., 2009), adequate interoperability between manufacturing systems that are distributed across the CMN is essential for the success of this network. To a certain extent, this interoperability issue is not properly addressed by most of the conventional integrated manufacturing systems (Chiu et al., 2006 and Lin et al., 2009). Especially these systems are established by closely coupling computer systems with inflexible interfaces that are hard-coded to accommodate the purpose of a Business-to-Business (B2B) relationship. Under a customised interface, these systems fulfil the objectives of information sharing, and they proved adequate in sustaining the automation of most pre-defined business operations. However, hand-coded interfaces are not readily adaptive to the frequent changes as experienced within a CMN. As a result, participants within the network must invest invaluable resources in performing substantial updates just to maintain the operation of their existing systems. In order to conform to these integration architectures, the system must be commonly endorsed by all business partners to ensure smooth transaction of collaborative management activities. Furthermore, the schema of shared information and knowledge must be updated accordingly whenever the CMN changes its formation. The maintenance cost of these systems is therefore a critical drawback.
The current manufacturing integration architectures for CM business activities are facing heavy technical and financial burdens (Brunnermeier and Martin, 2002 and Chiu et al., 2006). These issues are significantly apparent for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) due to scarce financial resources and limited technical abilities. Instead of rapidly expanding the manufacturing capabilities and capacities to cope with the highly dynamic global market, CM usually constitutes lower risks and is more financially justified for manufacturing SMEs to achieve the same effects of internal expansion (Danilovic and Winroth, 2005, Johansen et al., 2005, Lin et al., 2005, Loeser, 1999, Nadvi, 1995, Wang et al., 2004 and Wheelen and Hungar, 2000). Furthermore, a survey of Australian Manufacturing Industry in 2005 demonstrated the willingness of the organisation to collaborate with other organisations (Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, 2005). In our work, the development of a Global Decision Support System (GDSS) enables optimised decision-making via facilitating interactions amongst the stand-alone manufacturing systems, and the adoption of a generic collaborative decision-making model. Subsequently, the GDSS is critical in building up the willingness for networked collaboration.
This paper is organised as follows: in Section 2, the background on manufacturing SMEs, CMN, and business process (BP) modelling are presented. In Section 3, the system architecture for the GDSS is discussed. In Section 4, a process-based collaborative decision-support model (CDSM) is proposed. The CDSM depicts the execution of global decision-making processes within a Small or Medium Manufacturing Enterprise (S/MME) and its business partners. Section 5, a real case example is given to illustrate the conceptual design of the GDSS. Finally, the concluding remarks and future work are discussed in Section 6.

نتیجه گیری انگلیسی

This paper analysed current business environment within a CMN setting in considering for the perspectives of a participating S/MME, and argued that a GDSS is necessary to enable the manufacturing oriented S/ME in near optimal decision-making within the CMN. A conceptual design of the GDSS is provided in this paper as a key contribution. In our approach, firstly, Microsoft .Net WSA is selected to design the system architecture for the GDSS. Fundamentally established on the existing Internet protocols and other cross-platform standards, the WSA delivers maximum information system interoperability on all levels ranging from a standalone simply application to a suite of software. Furthermore, the WSA-based GDSS design ensures that maximum system scalability and re-useability are readily achieved. Secondly, a CDSM is proposed to guide the process of optimised decision-making within the CMN. The model enables different functional units to analyse the decision under consideration separately and propose goals that are in favour of their respective functional units' performance. These goals are collected and then analysed using the IMGP approach, which allows decision-makers to concisely interact during the process of reaching a solution and quickly converge to a solution acceptable to all the decision-makers. The conceptual design of the GDSS is justified by a simulated case study on an Australian manufacturer. In our study, we have found that the GDSS is capable of integrating the existing distributed information systems within the local manufacturer and its CMN. This enables the managers of the local manufacturer to efficiently conduct collaborative decision-making activities in relation to other participants of the CMN. In addition, the GDSS enables an S/MME to realise the benefits of a CMN, without extensive alteration to their existing computer network architecture and software systems. The next step of our research project is to model other decision-making processes in compliance with the CDSM for the core BPs. Example of these BPs for sustainability in manufacturing include collaborative product design where design objectives of individual functional units are considered at the CMN level, and production order allocation problem where integer-based Meta-Goal Programming process is used to optimally distribute production orders amongst a group of manufacturers. Thus, the GDSS establishes a fundamental platform for future applications of decision-support approaches that can be continuously added in supporting the dynamic management processes for achieving sustainability in manufacturing in a CMN.